Crude Oil
Crude prices resumed their upward climb today with Brent futures adding $1.05/bbl to settle at $ 54.17 / bbl. WTI rose by 79 cents to $ 51.03 /bbl.
The immediate reason for the move was an unplanned production outage in the North Sea. The skittishness of the market pushed prices over the 100 day Moving Average of 53.75, a technically strong resistance. All this action took place after Brent had breached the $ 53 /bbl level from above, but was unable to stay below there for long.
API data today showed a draw in 1.8 Million barrels in Crude, 2.6 Million barrels in Gasoline and 2 Million barrels in Gasoil. All these reports are marginally more bullish than expected.
All this is grist to the mill of the bulls. So we can generally expect a rise in prices today with $ 55 and then $ 56 being targets. Of course, this would require corroboration of strong draws from the DOE. API report stock levels have reached 533.8 Million barrels as of last week end. As per DOE the stock levels at the end of the previous week were 533.9 Million barrels. This would suggest a flat response to a mild draw in crude being expected.
Naphtha
Naphtha markets continue to be strong in the prompt. However, the cracks have not changed much. The April Japan Naphtha Crack is still valued at 1.40. The Singapore Naphtha crack has receded to around flat.
Gasoline
Gasoline cracks have become stronger as well. Along with the stock draws in the US, there are reports of outages in Qatar as well as the UAE. April is valued at $ 13.0 /bbl. The May – June spread is at 50 cents.
Middle Distillates
The Gasoil crack is margnially weaker today. However, Jet has strengthened in the wake of disruption to supplies from Qatar. The crack for April is valued at $ 11.55 / bbl. The regrade for April is at -$ 0.45 /bbl and May at + $ 0.05 /bbl; an improvement of 10 cents over yesterday.
180 CST Fuel Oil
Furious trading activity in the Platts window gave further credence to the possibilities of a bull trading play in 380 Cst. 17 cargoes cargoes were traded yesterday in addition to the 13 traded yesterday. The April crack is valued -$ 3.60/bbl.
About this blog
This blog post attempts to give a top level summary of the Singapore market goings on to a person who seeks to obtain a directional sense of the market on a daily basis.
Disclaimer : All the views are the author’s personal views. These do not constitute an advice to buy or sell any commodity